Monday, August 27, 2007

Bank Holiday Open Thread

Well, at 3am I finally finished proof reading the GUIDE TO POLITICAL BLOGGING - now I've just got to finish the LITTLE BOOK OF BORIS, a collection of Boris quotes and cartoons. If you have any Boris quotes you think I should include, do let me know. I'm off to King's Hill for 18 holes in about an hour, so please use this thread to have a debate on whatever you like. But shouldn't you be on the beach?

It's not a bank holiday in Scotland, and I would be on the beach, but I have forgotten my arctic survival/biohazard suit.

Janet Daley does a "fings aint wot they used to be column in today's Telegraph.

"The play on the terrace was run by the children themselves according to their own hierarchies and invented rules and loosely supervised by the mothers, who all felt able (indeed, duty bound) to intervene when the behaviour threatened to get too aggressive or dangerous."

I once went hunting for conkers in a churchyard. We ended up throwing a stick at the conker tree to dislodge them. We were within a stones throw of stained glass windows. The caretaker came out and cornered us. We know we were in trouble. The police were mentioned. All manner of terrible things were about to befall us and the caretaker demanded our names and addresses. We had the presence of mind, at the age of 9 years old,to give false id's. Instead of prison, we got away with it, but we never went near that place again.

We were trespassing on private property and had to learn some boundaries.

These days, some parent with a grudge against society would have reported the caretaker to the police for child abuse. Either that or they would have gone round and given him a fat lip.

You get the kind of society you deserve.. the silence over the Rhys Jones shooting proves that.

I have recently seen the Dale . He appeared to be wearing some sort of coresetting and the suit was a masterpiece in the Trompe-l'œil genre. I think he may be quite fat but its hard to tell when you are dazzled by the gleam of freshly whitened teeth.

No problems about finding a good beach here.In fact the Rhodesian Embassy is in Hua Hin.Today is half Chinese New Year(sart jin as it is called in Thai)but it is not a holiday-neither is Chinese New Year for that matter.Still I have heard some fire-crackers go off and I have some kanom keng(the sweet the Chinese eat for this festival)and its my day off! So long life and prosperity in this year of the Pig to you all.

If you want a great holiday that costs less and where the people are warm and friendly then why not try Northern Cyprus? Great places to see with empty beaches and great food! All for less than the same holiday in Spain! Give it a try?

"Who wants to celebrate that the banks are on holiday?" So asked Chesterton, who rightly wanted instead to bring back numerous examples of "the holiday that is really a holy day".

We have far fewer public holidays in Britain than in Europe generally because other countries’ are drawn either from the liturgical calendar or from the great events in their respective histories. Who in Britain would know what these things were? David Cameron? Tony Blair? Come on! (To be fair, Gordon Brown would.)

Positively rejoicing in this baleful state of affairs is but one among the numerous demonstrations of just how utterly unconservative capitalism is. See the post on Waitrose and the farmers for more on this point.

This year, the holiday that everyone still calls Whit Monday happened to coincide with the real one. Well, let the real one be restored. While we’re at it, let Ascension Day be made a public holiday, as in Catholic and Protestant Europe alike.

And most of all, let Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day and Saint Patrick’s Day be made public holidays throughout the United Kingdom.

To those who argue that this would create a glut in the Spring and early Summer, I ask when else they would want public holidays if at all possible? In October, so that we could all sit in the wind and the rain?

Furthermore, although public holidays might be a bit much simply because of the sheer number of days involved (though for no other reason), our public institutions, not least including schools and the BBC, should mark the National Day of each and every Realm or Territory with which we share a Head of State.

Yet, during the Ealing Southall by-election, Tory loudspeakers proclaimed in various Asian languages that the Tories would instead make Muslim, Hindu and Sikh festivals public holidays in the same way as Christmas Day. And the Tories still came third!

There was much mirth, including on my blog. But now, that party’s “Quality of Life Commission” (don’t laugh, it’s real) has let it be known that its impending report is going to advocate that “local communities” be given the power to designate three public holidays in their respective localities.

In other words, the Tories are going to go around Asian areas at the next Election making this same promise all over again, adjusted according to how Muslim, Hindu or Sikh the particular constituency is.

And who is to make this decision, as to what are to be the new holidays? If this lunatic thing must happen at all, then it should at least be done by the elected local authority. Dream on! Cameron and his courtiers despise local government even by the standards of national politicians, and that is saying quite something.

Specifically, they hate their own party’s many Councillors, who are living proof that, if people are going to vote Tory at all, then they are going to vote for Tories utterly unlike Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Vaizey and the rest of them.

So whoever might eventually decide that people working (not necessarily living, presumably) in Ealing Southall are to be given days off for Eid, Diwali and Guru Nanak’s Birthday, it is certainly not going to be Ealing Borough Council.

Well, then, David Cameron, once your new friends who run the mosques, the mandirs and the gurdwaras in areas with many such have been given control over designating an additional three public holidays in each of those areas, over what else are you going to give them control in order to keep them getting out the vote for your Bullingdon brethren? I think we should be told.

The restoration at national level of the old ruling class shorn, in these post-Thatcher days, of the traditional social conscience that was by far the best thing about it, is not much of a cause at all.

Still less is it a cause worth purchasing at the price of localised Caliphate, Hindutva or Khalistan.

david lindsayI expect if you were living overseas in a non-Christian country you would ask for Christmas Day off.You wouldn't change your beliefs so why should you expect others to change theirs.Commonwealth Day could be made a public holiday but it is in March so forget about going to the beach.

And anyway, there is rather more going on here: Cameron wants to give the people who run the mosques, the mandirs and the gurdwaras sweeping powers over local communities where many such insitutions are located, just so long as they get out the vote for the Bullingdon Boys.

The neocons, and above all the Bush Dynasty (even posher than Cameron and Osborne), did something like this with the Hispanics (and language will be an issue here, too). As to quite where that ended up, read today's papers.